Meditation and mindfulness often go hand in hand, and are great practices to do at night. However, if you keep forgetting to practice them, you might need a little reminder, which is where the nighttime routine comes in.
With a routine, you do the same thing every day, which ultimately helps it become a habit that you don’t even have to think about.
Starting the Daily Nighttime Routine
This is similar to scheduling the meditation sessions, but really create a routine around your meditation practice. This can include doing the same things before and after meditating, such as adding in yoga or taking a warm bubble bath to relax. You might also want to journal around this time, have your morning coffee or evening cup of tea, or meditate as the last thing you do before sleep since it relaxes your body and mind. Create a routine that makes sense to you, works with your schedule and circumstances, and will encourage you to meditate on a regular basis.
Set Up the Perfect Meditation Space
Before you start your nighttime ritual, you need to have your meditation space ready and set up. It might move around your home depending on what other family members are doing at the time, since you need time to yourself for this practice, but try to schedule it during a time where you always meditate in the same place. This allows you to set up a dedicated medication space, whether it is in your bedroom, office, or a guest room with a corner specifically for this purpose. Think about what you might use while meditating, such as mala beads, music, a candle or essential oil diffuser, or healing crystals.
Try Meditation Triggers
A trigger is a word, phrase, time of day, or situation that reminds you that you need to do meditation. This will often depend on your schedule, whether you are doing it at a certain time of the day, or the main reason for meditating. If you are meditating for stress relief, naturally experiencing stress at home is your trigger. For other people, it is a phrase they tell themselves once a day, or the trigger is something like waking up for their morning routine. Choose something that you do every day if you want to turn it into a daily habit.
Relax First with a Warm Bath
Your nighttime ritual doesn’t necessarily only include meditation itself. This can be more of a nighttime routine, where you do roughly the same things each night. Before you start meditating, it can be good to be in a relaxed state, which is going to help with your meditation practice. One way to do this in the evening is add a bath to your nighttime routine. That way, you are relaxing your body after a long day, relieving some stress with bath salts and candles, and then feel invigorated and ready to relax your mind even further when you begin meditating.
Add Yoga to Your Nighttime Rituals
Lastly, why not add a quick yoga session to your nighttime rituals? Even if you prefer doing a full yoga workout routine in the morning or earlier in the day, that doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from a short session in the evening before bed. This is great to do either just before or after meditation, benefiting from both of these practices with more self-awareness and relaxation. Yoga in the evening helps inso many ways, from relieving stress and relaxing your body to help you get better sleep, to simply getting into a positive mindset for more peaceful dreams. It is also fun to do with the family before everyone gets ready for bed as a nice family-friendly activity.
Enforcing the Meditation Habit
You probably already know all the benefits of meditation and some of the basics to starting, but if you want to do it regularly, you need to turn it into a habit. Here are some ways to do that.
Make a Commitment
Committing to meditation every day is what is really going to turn it into a habit. You want to do it every day in a way that makes it part of your schedule. Commit to it by posting a tracker schedule on your wall, adding it to your phone to get reminders each day, or journaling about meditation. All of these will really help you commit to the practice.
Remember the Benefits
Still need a little more of a push? Remind yourself of the benefits! Think about why you want to meditate and turn it into a habit. Think of all the benefits, from reducing stress and anxiety to helping you sleep better and even providing some natural anti-aging benefits. There is so much that it can do for you, where the more you meditate and learn this practice, the better off you will be.
